"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Bruton Smith has an idea how to create more excitement in NASCAR.

NASCAR President Mike Helton
didn't sound very interested in the billionaire track promoter's
suggestion to throw bogus cautions to bunch up the field. Smith argued
last weekend at Kentucky that long green-flag runs are damaging NASCAR
and floated his theory on creating mandatory cautions.

On Thursday, Helton said NASCAR fans don't want manufactured drama.

"NASCAR
fans want the event to unfold unartificially," Helton said at Daytona
International Speedway. "The racing that goes on on the racetrack under
green is as exciting as any in motorsports. Sports is a true reality
show as it unfolds ... you have to be careful when you think about
artificially creating the outcome of that."

The
current state of racing has been hotly debated this season because of
the scarcity of caution-causing incidents. It's created a lot of
green-flag racing that many fans have complained is boring to watch, and
Smith seemed to agree with his mandatory caution proposal.

"You just can't sit there and nothing is happening," said Smith, owner of Speedway Motorsports Inc.
"It ruins the event. It's damaging to our sport. Look at some of your
other sports — they have a mandatory timeout, TV (commercial) time and
all these things, and that creates things within the sport.

"If
you have (cautions) every 20 laps, I don't care. It adds to the show.
Someone once said we were in show business — if we're in show business,
let's deliver. Let's deliver that show. Right now, we're not
delivering."

Smith's suggestion was pretty much panned by several drivers asked about it Thursday, none more so than Carl Edwards, who warned mandatory cautions would send NASCAR down "a slippery slope."

"When
we start using cautions to make the race 'more exciting,' I think
that's going down a slippery slope," Edwards said. "I don't think that's
good for the sport. The idea of a mandatory caution . is the next
dimension of (being artificial). You can't fabricate sport. Leave sports
alone and let the best man win."

He likened mandatory cautions to
stopping and re-setting the score in a basketball game because one team
had too big of a lead, and said a halftime break was the equivalent of
making two races and the first one doesn't count.

Edwards
even offered his own idea: drivers line up exactly how they were
running when the yellow flag came out, with the exact same distance
between the cars, and resume from a standing start.

But
Edwards teammate Greg Biffle seemed to support the mandatory caution
concept if the racing continues the way it's been this season because
"we are somewhat in the entertainment business.

"I
would not be against it if we see the races continue to run green the
whole way with one or two cautions," Biffle said. "I think that that,
over time, could lose the fans' interest. Sitting in the stands and
watching on TV, I think they could lose interest, and that's not what we
want."

Helton finds the
entire caution-flag discussion amusing, particularly since NASCAR is
often accused of calling bogus cautions for mysterious debris.

"We
go through a cycle where the industry or fans or someone seems to think
we throw too many cautions," Helton said. "Then we go through a cycle
where maybe people think, 'What's happened to all the cautions?' . It's
kind of interesting to be accused to not having enough cautions. Time
will swing back-and-forth."

And, comparing NASCAR to other sports that have halftimes or timeouts isn't relevant, Helton said.'

"We
always try to adapt to the current and the relevant culture, but racing
is different and it can't really be compared to other sports that have,
by their design and the way they unfold, built-in breaks," Helton said.

Four-time
NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon didn't dismiss Smith's idea on cautions
outright, but had his own suggestion on how to raise the excitement.

"I'd
rather have (mandatory cautions) than some mysterious debris caution to
be honest," Gordon said. "The integrity of racing, to me, what it's all
about is letting the race play out. I'm not totally against it. But I'm
more leaning more toward letting the race play out.

"If you'd really like to know what I'd like to see, I'd like to see heat
races and invert the field and have a 50-to-100-lap shootout. That's
what I grew up racing. It's exciting. It's fun."

The United States government has assured its citizens that, much like zombies, mermaids probably do not exist, saying in an official post: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found."

"Mermaids -- those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea -- are legendary sea creatures," read the online statement from the National Ocean Service (NOS).

The agency, charged with responding to natural hazards, received letters inquiring about the existence of the sea maidens after the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network broadcast "Mermaids: The Body Found" in May.

The show "paints a wildly
convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look
like, and why they've stayed hidden... until now," a Discovery Channel
press release says.

Conversely, the US government declaration offered no conclusive proof to deny the existence of mermaids.

The statement comes after another government agency,
this time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
declared there was no conclusive evidence for the existence of zombies.

The CDC had published instructional materials on how to survive a "zombie apocalypse," in what the agency now calls "a tongue in cheek campaign to engage new audiences with messages of preparedness messages."

The campaign was followed by a series of cannibalistic attacks in North America.

In one such attack on May 26, a 31-year-old Miami man stripped naked and chewed off most of a homeless man's face.

The Twittersphere was suddenly alive with people talking about the real and present danger of a zombie apocalypse.

The CDC was quick to respond to allegations of corpses rising from the dead to eat the living.

"CDC does not know of a virus or
condition that would reanimate the dead," a government spokesperson
wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

While zombies would be a big problem, popular folklore holds that mermaids are relatively benign creatures.

But the NOS statement associated the finned friends with more threatening mythological beasts.

"Half-human creatures, called
chimeras, also abound in mythology -- in addition to mermaids, there
were wise centaurs, wild satyrs, and frightful minotaurs, to name but a
few," it said.

Nope, not a zombie.

To save money on the installation of central air-conditioning in his St. Joseph, Mo., home, Bryan Fite
began replacing the wires in his attic, prying up the floor boards on
the rafters. Along with possible savings, he found a treasure beneath
the floorboards: 13 bottles of century-old whiskey.

Fite, 40, grew up in St. Joseph, and after working in Kansas City for
several years, he returned to settle in his hometown in September 2011.
The house he and his wife Emily Fite chose was built in the 1850s and needed work, Fite said.

The cost of installing central A/C and heat was prohibitive, he said, so
he got to work in his attic. What first appeared to Fite as a set of
strangely shaped insulated pipes turned out to be the secret whiskey
stash of one of the house's former owners — or so goes Fite's main
theory of how the liquor ended up there.

When they purchased the house, the Fites received a paper abstract
detailing the history of its ownership. One of the owners, Fite said,
had to give up the house when he was consigned to a sanitarium "for
alcohol reasons." Fite hypothesizes that this alcoholic hid the bottles
in the attic for some future occasion.

"Unfortunately, he never got the chance," Fite said.

All the whiskey in Fite's attic was bottled in 1917 and distilled
between 1912 and 1913. Fite, a self-proclaimed history buff, said the
four bottles of Hellman's Celebrated Old Crow whiskey he found may have
been among the last of their kind. In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in favor of Edson Bradley, the maker of the still-popular Old Crow
whiskey bottled by the makers of Jim Beam, allowing him exclusive rights
to the "Old Crow" label.

In addition to the Old Crow bottles, Fite's attic was keeping cool a few
bottles of Guckenheimer, the erstwhile Pennsylvania rye whiskey, and W.
H. McBrayer's Cedar Brook whiskey.

In 2017, when the bottles turn 100, Fite and his friends will pop them open, he said. But for now, they are simply antiques.

"Part of the allure for me is having them in their original state," said
Fite, who identified bourbon as his drink of choice. "I have high
expectations of what they'll taste like, and I'm afraid if I open them
I'll be disappointed."

The quality of Fite's findings depend largely on the liquid level of the
whiskey in the bottles, said Lew Bryson, managing editor of
WhiskyAdvocate.com. If enough whiskey has evaporated, oxygen will enter
the bottle and begin rusting the whiskey, and its "off flavors" will be
concentrated in what remains, according to Bryson.

"Unfortunately, the good stuff leaves first," he said.

But unlike wine, in which yeast continues fermenting in the bottle,
whiskey's alcohol content is too high to support any organisms. As long
as the cap or cork is secure enough not to let in much oxygen, the age
of the bottle will not affect the quality or taste of its contents.

Bryson said Fite could likely sell the bottles for several hundred
dollars apiece. Pre-prohibition whiskeys are of historical interest, he
said, adding that as a Pennsylvania rye enthusiast, he would be
interested in buying one of Fite's Guckenheimers.

The value of antique whiskey is influenced by factors such as rarity and
the reputation of the brand, he said, but it is not easy to predict, he
said. An extremely rare single-malt whiskey from the 1930s recently
sold for $100,000.

I guess the phrase "human rights abuses" is relative. Look what our ruling elite does to their enemies' babies [one might be inclined to think the babies themselves are the enemy] and Argentina looks positively civilized.

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla
was convicted and sentenced to 50 years Thursday for a systematic
program to steal babies from prisoners who were kidnapped, tortured and
killed during the military junta's war on leftist dissidents three decades ago.

Argentina's last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, also was convicted and got 15 years. Both men already were in prison for other human rights abuses.

"This
is an historic day. Today legal justice has been made real — never
again the justice of one's own hands, which the repressors were known
for," prominent rights activist Tati Almeida said outside the courthouse, where a jubilant crowd watched on a big screen and cheered each sentence.

The
baby thefts set Argentina's 1976-1983 regime apart from all the other
juntas that ruled in Latin America at the time. Videla other military
and police officials were determined to remove any trace of the armed
leftist guerrilla movement they said threatened the country's future.

The
"dirty war" eventually claimed 13,000 victims according to official
records. Many were pregnant women who were "disappeared" shortly after
giving birth in clandestine maternity wards.

Videla
denied in his testimony that there was any systematic plan to remove
the babies, and said prisoners used their unborn children as "human
shields" in their fight against the state.

Nine
others, mostly former military and police officials, also were accused
in the trial, which focused on 34 baby thefts. Seven were convicted and
two were found not guilty.

Witnesses included former U.S. diplomat Elliot Abrams.
He was called to testify after a long-classified memo describing his
secret meeting with Argentina's ambassador was made public at the
request of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group
whose evidence-gathering efforts were key to the trial.

Abrams
testified from Washington that he secretly urged that Bignone reveal
the stolen babies' identities as a way to smooth Argentina's return to
democracy.

"We knew that it wasn't just one
or two children," Abrams testified, suggesting that there must have been
some sort of directive from a high level official — "a plan, because
there were many people who were being murdered or jailed."

No
reconciliation effort was made. Instead, Bignone ordered the military
to destroy evidence of "dirty war" activities, and the junta denied any
knowledge of baby thefts, let alone responsibility for the
disappearances of political prisoners.

The U.S. government also revealed little of what it knew as the junta's death squads were eliminating opponents.

The
Grandmothers group has since used DNA evidence to help 106 people who
were stolen from prisoners as babies recover their true identities, and
26 of these cases were part of this trial. Many were raised by military
officials or their allies, who falsified their birth names, trying to
remove any hint of their leftist origins.

The
rights group estimates as many as 500 babies could have been stolen in
all, but the destruction of documents and passage of time make it
impossible to know for sure.

The
trial featured gut-wrenching testimony from grandmothers and other
relatives who searched inconsolably for their missing relatives, and
from people who learned as young adults that they were raised by the
very people involved in the disappearance of their birth parents.

Prosecutors
had asked for 50 years for Videla and four others. Almeida, the rights
activist, said that "in some cases we would have preferred longer
sentences, but since they're such old men now, it's almost like a
perpetual sentence."

Videla, 86, received the maximum sentence as the man criminally responsible for 20 of the thefts.

He
and Bignone, 84, already have life sentences for other crimes against
humanity, and are serving time behind bars despite an Argentine law that
usually permits criminals over 70 to stay at home.

Seven
others were convicted and sentenced by the three-judge panel on
Thursday: former Adm. Antonio Vanek, 40 years; former marine Jorge
"Tigre" Acosta, 30; former Gen. Santiago Omar Riveros, 20; former navy
prefect Juan Antonio Azic, 14; and Dr. Jorge Magnacco, who witnesses said handled some of the births, 10.

Former
Capt. Victor Gallo and his ex-wife Susana Colombo, were sentenced to 15
and five years in jail, respectively. Their adopted son, Francisco
Madariaga, testified against them and said he hoped their sentences
would set an example.

William Lynch,
the 44-year-old California man who admitted he pummeled a Jesuit priest
who he said abused him as a boy, has been found not guilty of felony
assault and elder abuse charges.

The jury of nine men and three women could not reach a verdict on a
lesser charge of misdemeanor assault for the 2010 attack at a retirement
home, deadlocking 8-4 to convict him.

Lynch could have faced four years in jail if convicted on all the charges.

"I honestly thought I was going to jail," Lynch said after the verdicts
were read, according to The Associated Press. "It turned our better than
I expected."

The jurors began deliberations late Monday after hearing impassioned closing arguments from both sides.

The defense's strategy had been to argue to the jury that the wrong man
was on trial -- that Lynch, not the priest, was the real victim.
However, prosecutor Vicki Gemetti urged jurors to focus on the assault.

"Two wrongs don't make a right," she said in her closing arguments on Monday.

Lynch's crusade for his own form of personal justice against the priest,
Jerry Lindner, drew supporters to the courthouse in San Jose, Calif.,
during his nearly three-week trial. They carried signs that read "stop
clergy sex abuse" and condemned the "pedophile playground" retirement
community that is home to Lindner, who has had previous allegations
against him.

Lynch testified last Friday that he visited Lindner with the intention
of having the aging Lindner sign a confession, but when the priest
"looked up and leered" at him in much the same way he did more than 35
years ago when he sexually abused him, Lynch said he ordered the priest
to take off his glasses and hit him.

Lynch passed up a plea deal of one year in jail and instead chose to go
to trial to shame the man who he said had haunted his memories since his
childhood.

"I don't want to go to jail, but I've come to realize that this whole
thing is really bigger than me and the way that I've chosen to handle
this is to make a statement," Lynch told The Associated Press before the
start of his trial. "I'm prepared to take responsibility for anything
I've been involved in. I'm willing to do it. I think it's a small
sacrifice to get Father Jerry into court."

On a family camping trip 35 years ago, when Lynch was 7, he said he was
brutally raped by Lindner and was then forced to perform sex acts on his
4-year-old brother. The alleged attack occurred in the Santa Cruz
Mountains in 1974.

The boys kept their painful secret for years, long past the six-year
statute of limitations California had in place at the time of the
alleged crimes.

Lynch got his wish to see the priest in court, even if Lindner was not
the defendant. Lindner was forced to testify, but soon invoked his Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination. The judge struck his
testimony from the record.

During his short time on the stand, Lindner, now 67, told the court he
remembered Lynch, but only as the man who attacked him at a Los Gatos,
Calif., Jesuit retirement community where Lindner has lived since 2001.

Lindner denied molesting Lynch and his younger brother.

Lynch's attorney declared the priest had perjured himself and even
prosecutor Vicki Gemetti said in her opening statement that she expected
Lindner to lie on the stand or say he didn't remember certain events.

"The evidence will show [Lindner] molested the defendant all those years
ago," she said, but urged the jury to focus on Lynch's attack.

Lynch's case of alleged vigilante justice has attracted support from
around the world and has shed light on a justice system many view as
flawed.

Lynch and his brother were awarded $625,000 after filing a civil suit
against Lindner in 1997. The priest was removed from active ministry and
was moved to the Jesuit retirement community in 2001.

Lindner was named in two other abuse lawsuits, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third straight month
of weak hiring that shows the economy is still struggling three years
after the recession ended.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said in its report Friday.

The economy added an average of just 75,000
jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That's one-third of the 226,000 a
month created in the first quarter.

For the first six months of the year, U.S.
employers added an average of 150,000 jobs a month. That's fewer than
the 161,000 a month for the first half of 2011. And it shows that the
job market is weakening.

"It's a disappointing report," said George
Mokrzan, director of economics at Huntington National Bank in Columbus,
Ohio. He said the job gains are consistent with sluggish economic
growth.

The stock market opened sharply lower. The Dow
Jones industrial average dropped 146 points in the first hour of
trading, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 15 points, or 1.1
percent.

Money flowed into government bonds, perceived
by investors as safer. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury
note, which moves in the opposite direction from its price, fell to 1.55
percent, from 1.59 percent on Thursday.

A weaker job market has made consumers less
confident. They have pulled back on spending, even though gas prices
have plunged since early spring.

Europe's debt crisis is weighing on U.S.
exports, which has slowed growth at U.S. factories. And the scheduled
expiration of several big tax cuts at the end of this year has increased
uncertainty for many U.S. companies, making many hesitant to hire.

High unemployment could shift momentum to Mitt
Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. An Associated
Press-GfK poll released last month found that more than half of those
surveyed disapproved of President Barack Obama's handling of the
economy.

Obama is expected to face voters with the highest unemployment rate
of any president since the Great Depression, and the economy is the top
issue for many voters.

The June job figures could also prompt the
Federal Reserve to take further action to try to boost the economy. The
Fed last month downgraded its economic outlook for 2012. It predicted
growth of just 1.9 percent to 2.4 percent. And it doesn't expect the
unemployment rate to fall much further this year.

John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo,
said he didn't think Friday's report would prod the Fed to launch a new
effort to boost growth after its next policy meeting at the end of this
month.

But Silvia said if the job market doesn't
improve over the next couple of months, the Fed might launch a third
round of bond buying at its September meeting. Bond buying by the Fed is
intended to lower long-term interest rates to encourage borrowing and
spending.

"Most firms can achieve their output target with their existing labor force, so they are just not hiring," Silvia said.

Silvia said the June job growth is consistent
with annual economic growth below 2 percent. Wells Fargo is forecasting
growth in the April-June quarter at 1.5 percent, weaker than the 1.9
percent growth in the first quarter.

Still don’t believe in climate change? Then you’re either deep in denial or delirious from the heat.

Have you noticed how the bogeyman has changed from "global warming" to "climate change"?Heck, the climate here at my dacha changes every time the sun goes down. Or when the seasons change.

As I write this, the nation’s capital and its suburbs are in post-apocalypse mode.
[Post-apocalyptic zombie mode is more like it. Eric Holder is killing and eating Border Patrol agents and then blaming The Vast Right Wing You-Know-What. - F.G.] About one-fourth of all households have no electricity, the legacy of
an unprecedented assault by violent thunderstorms Friday night. Things
are improving: At the height of the power outage, nearly half the region
was dark.

The line of storms, which killed at least 18 people as it raced from the
Midwest to the sea, culminated a punishing day when the official
temperature here reached 104 degrees, a record for June. Hurricane-force
winds wreaked havoc
with the lush tree canopy that is perhaps Washington’s most glorious
amenity. One of my neighbors was lucky when a huge branch, headed for
his roof, got snagged by a power line. Another neighbor lost a tree that
fell into another tree that smashed an adjacent house, demolishing the
second floor.

Yes, it’s always hot here in the summer — but not this hot. Yes, we
always have thunderstorms — but never like these. (The cliche is true:
It did sound like a freight train.)

According to
scientists, climate change means not only that we will see higher
temperatures but that there will be more extreme weather events like the
one we just experienced. Welcome to the rest of our lives.

This
is the point in the column where I’m obliged to insert the disclaimer
that no one event — no heat wave, no hurricane, no outbreak of tornadoes
or freakish storms — can be definitively blamed on climate change. Any
one data point can be an anomaly; any cluster of data points can be mere
noise.

Now watch as Geenie Weenie disregards the only reasonable paragraph [albeit a short one] he has ever typed...

The problem for those who dismiss climate change as a figment of
scientists’ imagination, or even as a crypto-socialist one-worldish plot
to take away our God-given SUVs, is that the data are beginning to add
up.

NASA’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which monitors global surface
temperatures, reports that nine of the warmest 10 years on record have
occurred since 2000. The warmest of all was 2010; last year was only the ninth-warmest, but global temperatures were still almost a full degree warmer than they were during the middle of the 20th century.

Why might this be happening? Well, the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is more than 35 percent greater
than in 1880, NASA scientists report, with most of the increase coming
since 1960. And why might carbon dioxide levels be rising? Because since
the Industrial Revolution, humankind has been burning fossil fuels —
and spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — at what could turn out
to be a catastrophic rate.

Scientists’ predictions about how quickly temperatures would rise —
and how rapidly assorted phenomena, such as melting polar ice and rising
sea levels, would proceed — have turned out, thus far, to be
conservative.

Meanwhile, the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history
were destroying hundreds of homes — a legacy of drought that left
forests as dry as tinder. Changes in rainfall and snowfall patterns in
the West cannot, of course, be blamed on climate change with any
certainty. But they are consistent with scientists’ predictions.

It becomes harder to ignore those predictions when a toppled tree is blocking your driveway and the power is out.

One
other observation: As repair crews struggle to get the lights back on,
it happens to be another sunny day. Critics have blasted the Obama
administration’s unfruitful investment in solar energy. But if
government-funded research had managed to lower the price of solar
panels to the point where it became economical to install them on
residential roofs, all you global-warming skeptics would have air
conditioning right now. I’m just sayin’.

Deep in oceans around the world lurks a type of worm without a mouth,
anus or gut [At least that means they can't be homosexual zombie worms. - F.G.] that makes its living by eating the bones of whales and
other deceased sea creatures. But how does an animal without a mouth penetrate bone? That's just what a group of researchers aimed to find out.

The so-called zombie worms break down bone by excreting acid, according to research just presented at the Society for Experimental Biology's meeting in Salzburg, Austria.

It was previously unclear how the worms did it, since they lack any organs for "drilling," said researcher Sigrid Katz of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

The researchers found two different types of acid-secreting enzymes in the animal, Katz told OurAmazingPlanet. One of the enzymes, a proton pump, was abundant in the roots, the part of the worm that penetrates the bone.

The animals produce acid using the same basic mechanism as the human cells called osteoclasts involved in bone resorption, necessary for the continual turnover and reformation of bone.

Symbiotic bacteria allow the worms to digest fats and other materials within bones.

The worms, whose official genus name is Osedax, are about 1
inch (3 centimeters) long and were discovered on a whale carcass in
2002. But that's just the females. The males never make it past the
larval stage and are about 1/20th of an inch (1 millimeter) long;
hundreds of them may live inside a gelatinous tube covering part of the
female. The male's sole purpose seems to be fertilizing the female's
eggs, Katz said.

There are plenty of new names connected with the Pirates' resurgence
this season. Burnett, Barajas, Barmes, Bedard, McGehee, Sutton. And
Zoltan.

Amid all the excitement of having a competitive baseball team -- and
perhaps ending a record-setting string of 19 losing seasons -- the 2012
Pittsburgh Pirates have embraced a wacky bit from a goofy movie to
celebrate their success. Whenever a player slaps an extra-base hit, his
teammates put their hands together -- the left one on top of the right
one with the thumbs extended and touching -- to form a sort of "Z."

For Zoltan.

"It all started in Atlanta when we were watching [television] in the
clubhouse, and there was nothing we wanted to watch," said second
baseman Neil Walker, recalling the last weekend in April. "We saw 'Dude,
Where's My Car?' And guys were like 'Oh, we haven't seen this in a
while.' So we watched it. "It was just so terrible and stupid. We just
pulled that from it. It's just kind of our team way of bonding, I
guess."

The 2000 comedy features a scene in which the stars, Ashton Kutcher and
Seann William Scott, join a group of losers who are wearing Bubble Wrap
and celebrating the pending arrival of the cult leader Zoltan.

"I think you've got to just find ways to lighten the mood at times,"
Walker said. "This game is so difficult that when times are going good,
you have to celebrate. When times are going bad, you have to forget
about it and move on. It's a way for all of us to come together a little
bit more and have fun with it."

Carole Kunkle-Miller was in the stands at PNC Park recently when she
noticed the players and fans making the strange hand gestures.

Okay, that's enough fun. Let's hear from a sports psychologist.

"I thought they were just being funny, and then I realized there was a
meaning behind it," said Kunkle-Miller, a certified sports psychologist
who has been practicing in Mt. Lebanon for 12 years.

It means the Pirates are winning and the players and their fans are
having fun. It became prominent among the players in May after catcher
Rod Barajas belted a game-winning home run against the Washington
Nationals at PNC Park. As he rounded third, he found his teammates
waiting for him at home plate, each one displaying the "Z."

"We just started doing it, we've been raking ever since," said starter
A.J. Burnett. "That was my favorite part of the night, seeing 20 guys
behind home plate doing that. It shows you what a group we have."
"It gives them a sense of shared goal and that positive message of
winning. It unifies them," said Kunkle-Miller. "I remember when the
Pirates were in the World Series (in 1979), they would play 'We Are
Family' to rally the fans and get everybody going. This is a variation
on that."

Like playoff beards, the Green Weenie and the Terrible Towel.

Oh, man. I wish I still had my Green Weenie...

"Athletes in general like to be part of a team," said Aimee Kimball,
director of mental training at UPMC Sports Medicine on Pittsburgh's
South Side. "So something that they all have in common, like an inside
joke, bonds them a little more. And the fans then take it to another
level."

Brilliant! Guys who play games for a living behave like boys!

"I love it because it's specific to them," said Pirates fan James Hans,
30, of Delmar, who attended Tuesday night's game at PNC Park. "They're a
band of brothers sticking together."

"It's great," said his friend, Joey Morris, 29, of Plum. "It means
they're having fun, and if they're not having fun, they're probably not
winning."

Such would be the diagnosis of George Pappas, a sports psychologist who has been practicing in Squirrel Hill since 1985.

"It's important for athletes to have something to help them to tap into
their full resources," said Pappas, who has worked with professional
athletes across the country. "It helps in improving concentration,
getting rid of unnecessary tension, substituting negative thoughts with
positive thoughts. "It creates a positive image and it takes on like a
self-fulfilling prophecy. When you're negative, a player strikes out,
and he might dwell on what he's been doing wrong. Now he has something
positive to think, and he's changed for the better."
Players always have been ritualistic, Pappas said.

Like tugging on your shirt, the way Pirates third baseman Richie Hebner did in the 1970s.

"I can see this working, this Zoltan, because now they believe they
have something that's going to lead them to getting more hits," Pappas
said. "And the fans form the association with it because they like to
emulate their favorite players. They want part of the team."

As do the merchants. Dan Rock, general manager at Common Wealth Press
on the South Side, said he and his co-workers were quick to seize on the
symbol and have been selling T-shirts depicting the "Z" for a couple of
weeks.

"We don't try to find T-shirt opportunities, but they seem to happen
quite a bit with our sports teams," Rock said. "It's pretty popular
right now, even though they don't have any words on them. Just the
hands. "That's what a lot of our stuff is. If you're not from
Pittsburgh, you won't get it. We get people who come in our shop all the
time and say, 'I don't understand what these shirts mean.' We're
definitely Pittsburghers making shirts for Pittsburghers."

Kunkle-Miller said she doesn't see anything wrong with rallying around something such as Zoltan.

"I don't think there's a downside," she said. "But the big picture is
that the reason why they're doing so well is not because of Zoltan. It's
what Clint Hurdle has done as manager, keeping them focused with a
positive attitude. It's definitely more than luck. But it's fun."

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher
hailed the discovery of "the missing cornerstone of physics" Wednesday,
cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for a new subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, or "God particle," which could help explain why all matter has mass and crack open a new realm of subatomic science.

First
proposed as a theory in the 1960s, the maddeningly elusive Higgs had
been hunted by at least two generations of physicists who believed it
would help shape our understanding of how the universe began and how its
most elemental pieces fit together.

As
the highly technical findings were announced by two independent teams
involving more than 5,000 researchers, the usually sedate corridors of
the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, erupted in frequent
applause and standing ovations. Physicists who spent their careers in
pursuit of the particle shed tears.

The new particle appears to share many of the same qualities as the one predicted by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs
and others and is perhaps the biggest accomplishment at CERN since its
founding in 1954 outside Geneva along the Swiss-French border.

Rolf
Heuer, director of CERN, said the newly discovered particle is a boson,
but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson
itself — an extremely fine distinction.

"As
a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a
discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a
Higgs boson."

The Higgs, which
until now had been purely theoretical, is regarded as key to
understanding why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give
all objects weight.

The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's
early theories. Gravity was there all the time before Newton explained
it. The Higgs boson was believed to be there, too. And now that
scientists have actually seen something much like it, they can put that
knowledge to further use.

The
center's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, sends
protons whizzing around a circular 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground
tunnel at nearly the speed of light to create high-energy collisions.
The aftermath of those impacts can offer clues about dark matter,
antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorize
occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.

Most
of the particles that result from the collisions exist for only the
smallest fractions of a second. But finding a Higgs-like boson was one
of the biggest challenges in physics: Out of some 500 trillion
collisions, just several dozen produced "events" with significant data,
said Joe Incandela of the University of California at Santa Barbara, leader of the team known as CMS, with 2,100 scientists.

Each
of the teams confirmed Wednesday that they had "observed" a new
subatomic particle — a boson. Heuer said the discovery was "most
probably a Higgs boson, but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson
it is." He referred to the discovery as a missing cornerstone of
science.

As the leaders of the two teams presented their evidence, applause punctuated their talks.

"Thanks,
nature!" joked Fabiola Gianotti, the Italian physicist who heads the
team called ATLAS, with 3,000 scientists, drawing laughter from the
crowd.

Later, she told
reporters that the standard model of physics is still incomplete because
"the dream is to find an ultimate theory that explains everything. We
are far from that."

Incandela
said it was too soon to say definitively whether the particle was
exactly the same as envisioned by Higgs and others, who proposed the
existence of an energy field where all particles interact with a key
particle, the Higgs boson.

Higgs, who was invited to be in the audience, said Wednesday's discovery appears to be close to what he predicted.

"It
is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime," he said,
calling the discovery a huge achievement for the proton-smashing
collider.

Outside CERN, the announcement seemed to ricochet around the world with some of the speed and energy of the particle itself.

In
an interview with the BBC, the world's most famous physicist, Stephen
Hawking, said Higgs deserved the Nobel Prize. Hawking said he had placed
a wager with another scientist that the Higgs boson would never be
found.

"It seems I have just lost $100," he said.

Marc
Sher, a professor of physics at William & Mary College, said most
observers concluded in December that the Higgs boson would soon be
discovered, but he was "still somewhat stunned by the results."

The
phrase "God particle" was coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon
Lederman, but it's used mostly by laymen as an easier way of explaining
the theory.

Wednesday's
celebration was mainly for researchers who explore the deepest, most
esoteric levels of particle science. But the particle-hunting effort has
paid off in other ways for non-scientists, including contributing to
the development of the World Wide Web.

CERN
scientists used the early Web to exchange information, and the vast
computing power needed to crunch all of the data produced by the atom smasher also boosted development of cloud computing, which is now making its way into mainstream services.

Advances
in solar energy, medical imaging and proton therapy used in the fight
against cancer have also resulted from the work of particle physicists at CERN and elsewhere.

The
last undiscovered piece of the standard model of physics could be a
variant of the Higgs that was predicted or something else that entirely
changes the way scientists think about how matter is formed, Incandela
said.

"This boson is a very profound thing we have found," he
said. "We're reaching into the fabric of the universe in a way we never
have done before. We've kind of completed one particle's story. ... Now
we're way out on the edge of exploration."

The discovery is so
fundamental to the laws of nature, Incandela said, that it could spawn a
new era of technology and development in the same way that Newton's
laws of gravity led to basic equations of mechanics that made the
industrial revolution possible.

"This is so far out on a limb, I
have no idea where it will be applied," he added. "We're talking about
something we have no idea what the implications are and may not be
directly applied for centuries."

After Helen Wolfgang gave birth to her daughter on Aug. 1, 1944, she
bought a pair of baby socks and mailed one to her G.I. husband in Europe
to let him know he’d become a father.

She didn’t know whether her husband, Army Pvt. William Welch of Masontown, received it.

“I never heard from him. ... The mail was very spotty,” said Wolfgang of Greensburg. “You could go six weeks without mail.”

Welch was killed Dec. 19, 1944, during the
Battle of the Bulge. When the Army shipped his belongings home, she
learned that he got her message. “He had the sock in his billfold, so I
knew he got it,” she said, wiping away tears.

Although 90 years old now, Wolfgang is among
widows of World War II servicemen whose memories of the husbands they
lost remain vivid.

Some, like Wolfgang of Greensburg, continue
decades after the war to try to find touchstones to the men they loved
who died in warfare, such as the Battle of the Bugle, the largest land
battle on the Western Front during World War II and the largest
engagement ever fought by the Army.

It involved more than 1 million men, lasting from December 1944 to January 1945.

And while no one disputes the contribution
such battles made to America’s freedom, celebrated Wednesday on
Independence Day, the emotional toll on the loved ones of victims of any
war can become a lifelong scar and longing.

“When you love someone and they leave, like
for the war, it’s just not final. You look for a final answer,” said
Wolfgang. “You’re always searching for someone who might have known
him.”

This week, Frank W. Towers, executive
secretary-treasurer of the 30th Infantry Division Veterans of WWII sent
Wolfgang a letter with the names of nine surviving members of William
Welch’s unit.

Wolfgang, who had three children with her
second husband, Robert Wolfgang of Salem, Ohio, has spent 68 years
searching newspaper stories about the battle, hoping to find the name of
someone, somewhere who served with her first husband.

She hasn’t had any luck and worries she is
running out of time. The Department of Veterans Affairs expects 250,000
World War II veterans will die this year.

Grief is especially difficult for women who
lose their husbands just after getting married, said Toni L. Bisconti,
an associate professor at the University of Akron who has written
extensively on the topic.

“They were in the part of their relationship
where they didn’t even have time to get tired of each other,” she said.
“When you lose someone at the beginning of a relationship, you’re always
looking for answers.”

Widows of all ages face multiple losses when
their spouses are killed, said Taryn Davis, 26, founder and executive
director of the American Widow Project, a Buda, Texas-based nonprofit
dedicated to the new generation of military widows, women who lost
spouses in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I lost my best friend. I lost the potential
father of my children. I lost myself. I lost grandchildren,” she said of
the 2007 death of her husband, Army Cpl. Michael Davis, killed by a
roadside bomb in Iraq after 18 months of marriage.

Taryn Davis established an online memorial to
her husband using technology not available in the 1940s. Today’s war
widows reach out to each other using Facebook and other social media.

“But there is no right or wrong way to do this,” Davis said. “The rug got pulled out from underneath us.”

Joanne Gump sympathizes with Wolfgang.

“It’s a need to connect, a need to be a part
of something you were once so deeply connected to,” said Gump, 65, of
Canonsburg, the widow of Marine Sgt. Dennis L. Gump Sr. , who died in
2008 from cancer that might have been caused by exposure to the
defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

Joanne Gump went to Vietnam last year and spent 10 days visiting places her husband was in the 1960s.

“It was a lifelong dream of my husband (to
return) and I felt he walked with me,” she said. “I can understand how
(Wolfgang) feels ... that is love everlasting.”

Many bereaved people experience a strong
connection with deceased loved ones, “something like an enduring bond,”
researcher George A. Bonanno, wrote in “The Other Side of Sadness: What
The New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss.”

Wolfgang’s future husband caught her eye as
he walked across the street in front of the American Laundry in Salem
where she worked.

“I saw this good-looking guy,” she said. “It was love at first sight.” They married Oct. 4, 1941; he was drafted Feb. 3, 1942.

She went from newlywed to new mom to grieving
widow in about three years. She became a Gold Star widow, hanging the
World War II symbol in the window of her home to signify the loss of a
family member in battle. It was one of four Gold Stars on her block.

Her continued search for information about the times and people her husband knew is not solitary.

“It happens all the time,” said Debra Kraus,
spokeswoman for Gold Star Wives of America Inc. The Washington-based
organization includes more than 10,000 members in 53 chapters in 26
states.

Survivors want to learn more about the deaths
of their spouses, said Ami Neiberger-Miller, public affairs officer for
the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, in Washington.

“Today families get death investigation
reports and autopsy reports if they want them — but they did not do
those in World War II,” Neiberger-Miller said.

I posted the following almost exactly a year ago and absolutely nothing has changed. I haven't checked, but I'm sure all the websites represented below will have eerily similar stories posted soon, if they haven't done so by now.

I'll always love the Pirates, but it's more of a nostalgic thing for me. [Check out theWillie Stargell stampavailable later this month from the USPS.] I wish them well, and if you're a fan, I wish you luck.

PITTSBURGH
(AP) — Paul Maholm and his Pirates teammates aren't looking at the
National League Central standings or checking the out-of-town scores.
Too early in the season, the lefty starter said. Funny, because it's
been a long time since Pittsburgh's been this good this late.- Business Insider

(For
complete Pirates coverage, see Piratesreport.com .) PITTSBURGH — The
process took longer than it should have for a second-place team, but for
the first time since the 1990 season, the Pirates will have as many as
three players in the All-Star Game on Tuesday night. On Sunday,
pitcher Kevin Correia joined pitcher Joel Hanrahan and outfielder
Andrew McCutchen on the National League roster. He ...

Pittsburgh Pirates: What Andrew McCutchen's All-Star Selection Means to the CityWhen
the rosters for the 2011 MLB All-Star Game were announced, Pittsburgh
fans couldn't help but feel robbed. Sure, Joel Hanrahan got in. He's
been one of the game's best closers this year with 26 saves and zero
blown saves. His ERA is phenomenal, and his fastball reaches blistering
speeds. If the Bucs have a lead going into the 9th inning, we all know
it's "Hammer Time." However, when the team ...- Bleacher Report

Funny
thing started happening in the last several weeks. Google searches for
terms such as "Pittsburgh Pirates tickets" and "Pirates schedule 2011"
began spiking. "PNC Park hotels" searches were up 40 percent in June
compared to the same time last year.

The
MLB trade deadline is July 31, and the Pirates could be buyers. While I
think the Pirates have a shot at finishing atop the NL Central without
making any moves, any of these five moves would help. I'm no general
manager, but it's easy to see that the Pirates have some soft spots in
their lineup. A solid bat at shortstop or first base could work wonders
for the Pirates. Not only would the ...

This
has been an interesting season for the Pittsburgh Pirates . In fact, it
has been an interesting season overall for the NL Central. The Pirates,
one of the teams in the MLB considered a "lost cause" throughout the
1990's and 2000's, have emerged from a proverbial grave—at least at this
point in the season—to put up favorable numbers and capitalize on the
downfall of some of the other NL ...

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.